Scout
Grappling Hook
- Some grapple points have been relocated or removed while the ability is reviewed for balance reasons. It is meant as a shortcut and limited vantage access tool, but some of the old points gave too much line of sight access across entire maps.
Stormbow
- BUGGED: We applied a fix for the damage consistency issues in latency on moving targets but QA has reported major issues. Please avoid using the Stormbow until the next update.

Team Deathmatch
- Rounds now last 8 minutes (16 minute matches) and are won after 25 points are scored. This is an experiment with shorter matches and is not a final change.

Miscellaneous
- Fixed a bug causing no item rewards to be granted when matches end

Psyonix_Corey

16th Jan 2014, 17:47

This doesn't represent the full list of balance changes in the pipe, there's more stuff from my list and some suggestions you guys had in Jest's thread in the next update.

Oroibahazopi

16th Jan 2014, 17:56

Did the matchmaking changes make it back in?

Strike5150

16th Jan 2014, 18:19

Yup, we are being split again.

cmstache

16th Jan 2014, 18:25

-Yes, teams get broken up, but it's still quirky.

-8 minute matches are no bueno. None of "us" like it. 10 minutes and 30 kills would be better. The way it currently is, if you get down in score you don't have enough time to adjust your strategy before the round is over. It's a huge deal.

-Shadow Bomb buff is awesome.

-Flamethrower latency seems to be significantly better!!!! Good Job!, now a little more range.... :)

-Tyrant life = good. They are still killable (even with enrage), but it's tough, as it should be. If you don't get a shot or two off because you miss before they get close, or they manage to sneak up on you then it's a wrap.

-Reaver atk buff is nice. Maybe a slightly faster wall climb for him would be sweet, otherwise good.

Finally, and most importantly, the biggest issue with balance (whiffing thru attacks on humans) seems to be fixed. Good job with that.

Psyonix_Corey

16th Jan 2014, 18:36

-Flamethrower latency seems to be significantly better!!!! Good Job!, now a little more range.... :)
-Reaver atk buff is nice. Maybe a slightly faster wall climb for him would be sweet, otherwise good.

These are both coming next update.

The 8 minute matches were an "extreme" change a few people wanted to try. I won't be surprised if we end up with 10 minute matches fairly soon, but it's worth the experiment. Quicker match times can alleviate a lot of issues.

cmstache

16th Jan 2014, 18:46

But, it's hard to test stuff too. O.o

Also Eric... GREAT JOB with the tower collapse on Sommerdamm. It's a better fix than fixing the "hole" anyways. That spot was a bit OP with that stairway there anyways. And it looks awesome.

Psyonix_Eric

16th Jan 2014, 18:53

But, it's hard to test stuff too. O.o

Also Eric... GREAT JOB with the tower collapse on Sommerdamm. It's a better fix than fixing the "hole" anyways. That spot was a bit OP with that stairway there anyways. And it looks awesome.

Thanks :) I'll pass word on to the other guys that worked on that.

The tower collapse was a two-step goal. First, internally and externally we found that humans were camping out there too much and could essentially guard all approaches. Second, we needed more feeling of a raging war. There's still some things we're adding, they're just not in yet.

RainaAudron

16th Jan 2014, 19:14

Must say don´t like the quick matches... 10mins would be much better.

cmstache

16th Jan 2014, 19:26

One of the major issues I'm having right now is gauging balance. We can't have preset teams, so the higher level players are playing with randoms, thus not an effective measure of whether or not things got buffed/nerfed too much.

Also, what's the new formula for gaining gold?

Psyonix_Corey

16th Jan 2014, 19:42

The only significant gold change is that it's 60 for a win, 40 for a loss since the matches are shorter.

RainaAudron

16th Jan 2014, 19:45

I am quite upset tonight after the patch - can´t play with people I want, no challenge (where are all the good players?), opponents want to surrender, got lags, sentinel is very bugged (picking up invisible people), short matches are not fun, etc....

Varulven

16th Jan 2014, 19:56

I'll make it short: I HATE the new update. :(

DeputyPotato

16th Jan 2014, 20:02

I'm not happy with the change in match time and kill amount it was just right :).

RainaAudron

16th Jan 2014, 20:07

I have played four matches tonight and each and every one was a torment to play. I had to quit.

lucinvampire

16th Jan 2014, 20:23

I loved the changes to Sommerdamm - it looks more rough and warzone now :D

I don't know what it was but tonight but it wasn't enjoyable or fun - it was just dead end...can't put my finger on it - think it was the less kills and shorter matches mainly :'(

cmstache

16th Jan 2014, 20:24

I haven't had ANY sent issues. Strike had a major issue though. Said that if a human dodged it made them immune to kidnap/abduct. Did they make the dodge more effective?

And the match time just make it hard to "get into it."

RainaAudron

16th Jan 2014, 20:53

Oh yeah, love the fallen tower in Sommerdamm, that´s pretty cool :)

Razaiim

16th Jan 2014, 20:55

Just reading the notes I like all the changes made except I feel matches will be too short. I always found the previous 12 minute round to be very good. It left time to develop counter play on both sides, and allowed time to make a significant comeback (and potentially game winning) comeback in a round. I'll edit this with gameplay impressions if I can find time for a decent play session.

Kuro1n

16th Jan 2014, 21:53

Okay so my opinion on the last patch and some other suggestions:

Since last patch I have experienced higher ping (EU), I was ~30 now I am ~45 but sometimes spiking higher. Other than that I've seen quite a lot of other players having ping issues as well.

Time limit, please up it to 10 minutes, I prefer shorter rounds but 8 is a bit short, also up the kill limit to 30 or so.

UI change, please show the HP of the classes in the loadouts so you can count how many shots of different weapons are used to kill a certain class.

Killing spree, would be great to reward players for killing AND staying alive, right now it annoys me greatly that a player with 10:12 will have better stats than I with 6:0 (most likely), considering he has made the team go -2p and I have made the team go +6 I have contributed towards our win, why am I not getting rewarded for that? I think Eric said this might be on your list already but can't recall.

Chatting after a round is over or the game, please let us do this. I want to say GG after the round is over or talk about the game, now I have to wait for the lobby and then people instantly leave.

A note to other players, the gold change feels like a big hit right now but it is not that big of a deal, thing is that right now you feel it as the games are infrequent with the small playerbase but with more players the gold will come in a lot quicker. :)

Other than that I think the patch have been very good, nice job! :)

RainaAudron

16th Jan 2014, 22:01

I had a lot of lags tonight, not really sure why, couldn´t pickup anybody with my Sentinel...

Kuro1n

16th Jan 2014, 22:14

Okay, same issue on NA server. Used to have 150 ping max but now I am 260+.

DeputyPotato

16th Jan 2014, 22:22

Team Deathmatch
- Rounds now last 8 minutes (16 minute matches) and are won after 25 points are scored. This is an experiment with shorter matches and is not a final change.

When will the experiment end?

cmstache

16th Jan 2014, 23:27

Killing spree, would be great to reward players for killing AND staying alive, right now it annoys me greatly that a player with 10:12 will have better stats than I with 6:0 (most likely), considering he has made the team go -2p and I have made the team go +6 I have contributed towards our win, why am I not getting rewarded for that? I think Eric said this might be on your list already but can't recall.

K/D means almost nothing in this game.

Kuro1n

17th Jan 2014, 00:41

K/D means almost nothing in this game.
Excuse me what the f*** did you just say? :D :D :D

The current game mode is all about the KD, 2:0 is better than 10:20 in this game, I hope you see why...

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 00:55

The current game mode is all about K/D for the team, not an individual. Often the person with 12-2 has almost no assists and does almost none of the work, where the person with 7-9-14 has a negative K/D but probably just as high of a score from the assists, yet did a lost more work overall.

Kuro1n

17th Jan 2014, 02:58

The current game mode is all about K/D for the team, not an individual. Often the person with 12-2 has almost no assists and does almost none of the work, where the person with 7-9-14 has a negative K/D but probably just as high of a score from the assists, yet did a lost more work overall.
Yes, teamwork matters of course and your teams overall K/D but that does NOT mean KD is not relevant, rewarding players for not dying is a great idea. Right now you are not rewarded even if you stay alive through a whole game which is quite silly.

Smeesh

17th Jan 2014, 04:20

I actually like this patch quite a bit now that I've had a chance to play it for a while. I think shorter match times are a good idea, but maybe 30 kills/10 minutes would be a little bit better. They did feel too long to me before and they really don't play that differently from short to long (if it's one sided it stays one sided, if it's close it stays close).

Reaver buffs are much appreciated, and I noticed a lot more people going for charge attack openings out of smoke bombs which really hurts. If you're a human and you get caught with one of these you're probably going to die unless your team can peel for you pretty quickly.

Most of us were hitting issues with lag/teleporting tonight but I'm sure that's going to be ironed out. The big thing I noticed, and I think someone touched on this with the sentinel kidnap issue, is that humans are 100% immune while dodging now. I don't know if that's always been there and I just noticed it or if it was an intended change. Could also apply to vampires for all I know, but every time a human dodged I couldn't hit them at all.

edit: Almost forgot about tyrant health buff. I honestly think that it's a good idea, but the damage on shockwave needs to be lowered to compensate for their additional hp. Tyrants should be hard to kill targets, but having that skill instant kill at max range is kind of ridiculous currently.

jestdoit

17th Jan 2014, 04:52

Initial impressions:

Humans got hit hard with the damage over range nerfs. Not only did they lose a lot of aim assist (a good thing) and gain recoil, but charged and regular scout shots at range are doing 1/3rd the normal damage. Damage is diminishing from a much closer distance. It's a lot harder to shut down aggressive vampire play - vampires can jump attack and fly more often, as well as set up team attacks from good locations without too much worry. People are landing less shots, and the ones that sneak through hurt less. Scouts and hunters play similarly to me, since both classes have to be close for optimal damage.

Charged melee hits are finally worth using.

Tyrants are BEEFY.

Given all the vampire fixes that have already gone in, I think human damage reduction over range is too much. Autoaim reductions and increased recoil is fine, but bow shots that only do 60 dmg, and repeater shots that only do 20dmg isn't very scary (plus they land less). With this patch, I feel like I can get away with haphazard play as a vampire. Ie. I no longer have to wait for teammates, or wait for hunters/scouts to look away before going from cover to cover, or use 3rd person to spot as much, soloing as a vampire is safer. Overall lower human damage lets you know when you're being targeted, so you have more time to react.

lucinvampire

17th Jan 2014, 09:27

I think the changes are good in way of vamps...it gives the vamps more chance as before the humans seemed too powerful…but need to play more since change to truly say...

I think shorter match times are a good idea, but maybe 30 kills/10 minutes would be a little bit better.

Agreed 10 mins – 30 kills would be nicer :D

Most of us were hitting issues with lag/teleporting tonight

Yes more than usual!

Tyrants are BEEFY.

Tyrant is the man :D he’s supposed to be well hard so should have always had more health – so glad they’ve done this to him :D

EDIT: I like every time there's a patch update there are more things/details added to the maps – dead people especially...I love them :D – nice additions of people hanging from the rafters in Sommerdamm - tasty :D …either that or I never noticed them all before.

Psyonix_Corey

17th Jan 2014, 10:34

I'll have a look at the damage falloff. Our goal was just to make it fall off more steeply at extreme range, not to neuter average encounters. It may be falling off too quickly if you're seeing 1/3 damage Scout shots, though the idea was to make him a bit less effective at cross-map plinking.

Humans shouldn't be immune during dodge. Nothing was intentionally changed with dodge, but we'll look into it.

RainaAudron

17th Jan 2014, 10:50

I´m sorry but I refuse to play in the state it is now - it turned all the games into series of boring quick plays where one team just pummels another with huge differences and letting the other team no way to catch on, and to top it, can´t play with friends anymore because it divides us every time... I got like 5 matches straight where my team mates had no clue on what do, it was painful to even watch, I had to quit. I am very frustrated by these changes. Last week I was enjoying every match and had lots of fun, now it feels it was drained from the game.. I was looking forward to play this weekend and this happens...

DeeArc

17th Jan 2014, 11:43

As a new player, the matches are brutal right now. Rank 20s just chain Kidnaps all day until it's suddenly max kill count. There's not enough time to acclimate. On the bright side, Vampires feel "right" now (or close to it), so there's that. Also, I hate to be That Guy, but I'm starting to see skins on other players. Pretty sure they're not developers...

For a future fix: My frame rate has become atrocious. I've got a Radeon HD 6670 with 8 gigs on an 64-bit Windows 8 OS and my FPS averages from 16 to 21 on every map. All my drivers are up to date, I've lowered all my settings as far as they'll go, and my connection's wired. So I'm really not certain what's wrong here, 'cause others aren't having the same issue.

EDIT: I posted at length about my frame rate problem in a Tech Discussion thread: http://forums.eu.square-enix.com/showthread.php?t=8950&p=79739#post79739

Smeesh

17th Jan 2014, 13:40

Also, I hate to be That Guy, but I'm starting to see skins on other players. Pretty sure they're not developers...

If you saw a skin, it's a dev team member. They have normal names like the rest of us and don't play on Psyonix_______ or whatever.

And thanks jest, I forgot to mention the damage drop off. I think a dropoff is needed so that scouts can't gib vamps at max range that just popped up and were looking for the human players, but it's a bit too drastic right now. Especially for hunters who weren't very effective at long range before and are now almost useless in that regard. On the other hand, scouts are much stronger at close range with the unaimed damage buffs which just makes me wonder why you would bother playing as a hunter currently when the scout is stronger in every area. Alchs haven't changed really, but they still feel somewhat lacking compared to the other two. I think they're a class that relies on their skills to do damage/cc effectively and the high cooldowns coupled with low damage leaves something to be desired there.

RainaAudron

17th Jan 2014, 13:51

Actually, it´s not only devs which have the skins now, all mods have them and also recently seen certain special testers do too.

Strike5150

17th Jan 2014, 16:17

Excuse me what the f*** did you just say? :D :D :D

The current game mode is all about the KD, 2:0 is better than 10:20 in this game, I hope you see why...

The reason he said that and the reason its mostly accurate is that when you go 6:0, there is a good chance its because you stayed in the back and didn't contribute much except when you got a guaranteed kill. When I play tyrant my roll is generally to initiate with charge or jump, tank the initial burst and enrage for the win. However, if I charge in and my team doesn't engage right away its pretty fast/grim end. So really if you go negative k/d but you supported your tyrant or reaver that ended up going really awesome k/d you still made sure your team won.

I can say with great certainty that the games where sausage is supporting me I do A LOT better. His k/d isn't always great depending on the role he is playing (Support, not bashing his skill), its not because he played bad but because his goal was to help me or plux get kills. He did that and we won because of it, not because we are so awesome we carried him.

So don't be so quick to look only at damage done or k/d ratio. While those do play a role in your win/loss they don't tell you a great deal necessarily about how well your teammates are playing. You should instead be paying attention to what stuns/heals/control that player is helping you get in the game.

Razaiim

17th Jan 2014, 16:40

The reason he said that and the reason its mostly accurate is that when you go 6:0, there is a good chance its because you stayed in the back and didn't contribute much except when you got a guaranteed kill. When I play tyrant my roll is generally to initiate with charge or jump, tank the initial burst and enrage for the win. However, if I charge in and my team doesn't engage right away its pretty fast/grim end. So really if you go negative k/d but you supported your tyrant or reaver that ended up going really awesome k/d you still made sure your team won.

I can say with great certainty that the games where sausage is supporting me I do A LOT better. His k/d isn't always great depending on the role he is playing (Support, not bashing his skill), its not because he played bad but because his goal was to help me or plux get kills. He did that and we won because of it, not because we are so awesome we carried him.

So don't be so quick to look only at damage done or k/d ratio. While those do play a role in your win/loss they don't tell you a great deal necessarily about how well your teammates are playing. You should instead be paying attention to what stuns/heals/control that player is helping you get in the game.

I understand what you mean. Early on I was trying to kidnap and drop them near team-mates to pick apart camping human teams. My self and Eric (I think) did this pretty consistently, where I would run under him until he dropped an enemy. But since it became easier to dominate sentinels from afar coupled with my spree of uncoordinated newer players to work with I just switched to abduct and ran to kill what I could, because there was no point waiting for a good engagement when your team-mates just rambo in one at a time.

So when I ran kidnap... my K/D was lower, but I was helping isolate humans from group, and then the main group would be weaker overall, which contributed (I feel) greatly to winning the match. However at the time I ran abduct and had the newer players I realized they have no concept or ability to co-ordinate, (even with me constantly streaming advice through the team chat), I ran up higher KD, but it did less to win because YOLO no team-work.

As humans I feel KD has the more usual bragging right relevance due to the more traditional shooter play style humans entail.

Kuro1n

17th Jan 2014, 17:21

Of course there are players doing good without good KD but then they have good assists, either way right now newbies are encouraged to run in and die instead of playing correctly by staying alive. For example if I am starting to take damage in an engagement I immediately sneak away if it is not my target that is dealing damage to me, better do some damage and be off alive instead of recklessly diving and dying as many people do due to no punishment for dying or rewards for staying alive.

So some KDA spree system? Either way I think you should reward proper play.

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 17:46

But, when you run off you leave that target to shoot another teammate, thus effectively turning it into a 4v3 scenario. You saved your life but cost the team 3 deaths. You made potentially 4-1 trade (vampires ahead) into a 3-0 or 3-1 scenario (humans ahead). But, hey at least you didn't die right? Sure, there's time to pull back, but don't do it unless it's done as a team. That's just selfish playing. ANd of course there's something to punish people who die TOO often... it's called a win ratio.

Oroibahazopi

17th Jan 2014, 18:24

Fall off on charged shots should be 50% AT MOST. Just goes back to my belief that scout and hunter are just homogenizing with each balance pass.

Kuro1n

17th Jan 2014, 18:37

But, when you run off you leave that target to shoot another teammate, thus effectively turning it into a 4v3 scenario. You saved your life but cost the team 3 deaths. You made potentially 4-1 trade (vampires ahead) into a 3-0 or 3-1 scenario (humans ahead). But, hey at least you didn't die right? Sure, there's time to pull back, but don't do it unless it's done as a team. That's just selfish playing. ANd of course there's something to punish people who die TOO often... it's called a win ratio.

No, if I have one of the targets busy and another jumps on me that means my teams offence is not working out properly leaving me to fend for myself versus two targets. Win ratio does not punish players, it simply shows that they are losing more than they are winning without any repercussions other than a number. + now we are discussing pub play, not comp or pug, right now there is very little communication going on so organizing a proper offence is not something that will happen. Different story with comp/pug when you have voice com.

Razaiim

17th Jan 2014, 18:41

Fall off on charged shots should be 50% AT MOST. Just goes back to my belief that scout and hunter are just homogenizing with each balance pass.

I've been noticing this as well. There is the potential for creating a role for each bow when you consider fall-off as a factor. Standard bow is just normal. Swiftbow has higher fall-off at range, as it is designed for close combat and quick firing. Warbow remains as is. Stormbow; initial damage would fall-off at normal, explosion damage would be mitigated less at long ranges, and increase the self-damage so it is weaker in close ranges. Just as food for thought, doesn't need to happen exactly like this.

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 18:51

Just keep the dropoff, but make the scout (sniperish class) charge immune to fall-off at a range, esp since grapples have been nerfed. Keep hunter falloff and make them more close range, and it's done.

Razaiim

17th Jan 2014, 19:01

The drop-off is still necessary, even with out grapple, every map except sommerdam has powerful view points, where near-cross map sniping is easy enough to do. While the scout is the long range sniper, properly positioned they can shut down huge parts of the map. The drop-off reduces this ability, but is overly strong, and also means getting to the height to observe the map as vampires is less dangerous, given two of the classes can't crouch to break line of sight on rooftops, and allows sentinels to be more effective when using take-off, and landing high speed kidnaps.

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 19:05

Only map I really ever have a HUGE issue with as far as getting picked off is Valeholm. Provence is open, but has enough buildings you can take cover behind.

Thomas_Hawk

17th Jan 2014, 19:41

So my feeling about new update when i playing for humans is like:"Okay, let's take a lead score and then survive for last 4 minutes" :D I didn't actually played much to judge(4-5 matches for now) but vampires now feels much stronger than before and i find it really hard to kite vampires with new melee range.

jestdoit

17th Jan 2014, 21:47

I'll have a look at the damage falloff. Our goal was just to make it fall off more steeply at extreme range, not to neuter average encounters. It may be falling off too quickly if you're seeing 1/3 damage Scout shots, though the idea was to make him a bit less effective at cross-map plinking.

It's not just the scout though, the hunter falloff is too extreme right now. I find it much easier to dive into players from open air, since humans are hitting less shots, for less damage. The autoaim/recoil nerfs are significant - my accuracy in previous patches was over 80%, with this patch it's more like 45%, if even. Nerfing the damage at range means vampires can constantly team attack from good angles and force humans into close combat with maxed health. Because of falloff, humans are having trouble preventing vampire setups, nor doing enough damage to knock players out of team fights before the close combat begins - basically, bumrushing with vampires works really well now.

I think the recoil and autoaim nerfs were enough, there's no need for further diminished range damage as well. Players should consider the big picture, especially all the vampire fixes/buffs that have gone in (with more in the pipeline). More reliable melee, the ability to hit multiple targets, and 2x charge damage have already done a lot to address issues in skilled play - vampires are much more dangerous up close, so there isn't a need to neuter human damage at range.

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 21:53

I'm kinda tired of hearing about all the nerfs the humans got. The issue isn't the humans. It's the fact that we have no teams anymore. The way it was, and will be once it returns, it was more consistent for team vs team and it was easier to notice changes. Humans are much less forgiving about a lack of teamwork, as such with no teams they WILL ALWAYS APPEAR UNDERPOWERED. They honestly are fine. Vampires I think, with an exception to the reaver suggestions we discussed, are pretty much perfect the way it is now. Humans for the most part aren't working together. The vampires, outside of the tyrant, didn't really get buffed that much, it's just that all the attacks (outside reavers with haste) are landing now.

jestdoit

17th Jan 2014, 22:46

I'm kinda tired of hearing about all the nerfs the humans got.

Said the sentinel ;)

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 22:48

I haven't really been playing sent much... tired of hearing ppl complain.

RainaAudron

17th Jan 2014, 22:52

The issue isn't the humans. It's the fact that we have no teams anymore. The way it was, and will be once it returns, it was more consistent for team vs team and it was easier to notice changes.

Nailed it.

Oroibahazopi

17th Jan 2014, 23:09

I don't think so, the vampire melee fix is so significant that I would have had a patch and testing period dedicated to that change alone.

cmstache

17th Jan 2014, 23:34

It was, it's just that the stuff that was in and had been reverted was put back in.

Psyonix_Corey

17th Jan 2014, 23:38

I think the recoil and autoaim nerfs were enough, there's no need for further diminished range damage as well. Players should consider the big picture, especially all the vampire fixes/buffs that have gone in (with more in the pipeline). More reliable melee, the ability to hit multiple targets, and 2x charge damage have already done a lot to address issues in skilled play - vampires are much more dangerous up close, so there isn't a need to neuter human damage at range.

Recoil hasn't changed on any weapon, at least not intentionally. The code values are all identical and the logic hasn't been adjusted.

I agree simply fixing some vampire melee issues is a "buff" by a different name. That doesn't mean it shouldn't have been done, but I'm not surprised it altered the faction balance. We expect a decent amount of balance swings happening throughout Alpha/Beta as we fix/adjust various aspects, it's inevitable with an asymmetrical game.

Part of the falloff change is looking into ways to address the fact that at high skill levels, skilled humans have high persistent burst at distance which allows them to spread out over long lines of sight and cover eachother with little to no penalty. This "spread formation" negates group-bursting abilities like Choking Haze, Ground Slam, Shadow Bomb, etc. but retains full ability to instantly target swap and focus fire enemies with minor reductions in accuracy or damage. Contrast this with the more ability-focused vampires whose skills all become significantly more difficult to use at range - long Pounces, Charges, etc. - and tie large portions of their damage output up on cooldowns which prevent them from maintaining extreme dps across multiple targets in a short span.

The extreme effectiveness of Camo+Grapple scouts is a testament to how effective humans are at delivering damage independent of ability usage. Personally I don't like that I can play a Hunter, miss ALL my grenade throws, and still be a top performer for the match. Ability deployment and usage should matter more than they currently do to human damage output.

Further, the levels were not built around vampires being harassable across the entire map persistently, and the factions just aren't balanced for it. That's why the damage falloff was relatively forgiving before because development playtests, for whatever reason, rarely led to this scenario. It's a credit to you guys and the entire point of this Alpha that you've developed such effective human strategies.

My preference, if we can get there, is to fix the LOS issues with level design tweaks and bring back up human damage at distance. But to some extent it's going to be impossible to create good levels that have zero areas that give what I'll call the "spread cover" formation described above for humans a major advantage. To that end we need to continue looking at ways to reduce how effective that strategy is.

Other options we can look at, at varying levels of riskiness:
- Migrating some human damage out of weapon damage and into ability damage (risks making weapons feel weak, and making support/situational abilities bad choices)
- Move to projectile hit detection for Crossbows and Longbows (I know this will be popular with the Tribes crowd, but it's very risky for new players. Some hybrid solution might make sense with low-skill hitscan weapons that are weaker in the metagame, etc. but ultimately this just delays the above problem until people are laser accurate with projectiles).

jestdoit

17th Jan 2014, 23:46

I haven't really been playing sent much... tired of hearing ppl complain.

Let's not pretend that the damage-over-distance nerfs haven't affected sentinels the most. Players like me and Bobo are diving in from half the map/across the map against level 13+ players that are good shots. Whereas before we'd be killed or be forced to retreat, now we can land grabs with 75% hp left, and getting a grab off usually guarantees a kill. If multiple people are shooting you, you have much more time to dodge and escape, since they're hitting for 1/3rd damage. So we can just run off for a bit, wait for a distraction, and do it again.

Being able to plink down vampires and forcing them to go into downtime before they got into threatening positions/distance was the only thing keeping stupidly aggressive play in check. Teams of rank 13+ players are getting rolled by streams of aggressive vampires and people have already been raging about it . If humans don't to enough damage to prevent/counter streams of dives and jump tyrants, you know what comes next, right? Nerfs to your beloved class. This is the reason I made a buff list thread, to bring underpowered facets up to par, instead of coming up with a list of nerfs where ultimately everyone gets crippled.

jestdoit

18th Jan 2014, 00:01

Recoil hasn't changed on any weapon, at least not intentionally. The code values are all identical and the logic hasn't been adjusted.

All Crossbows
- Firing spread in ironsights increased to 70% of normal, up from 50%

What I've noticed is the repeaters/siege bow kicking up more, with the reticle fattening quickly, making it much harder to keep the crossbows directly centered on a target. It could just be the autoaim changes though. Because shots are missing so much more than previous patches without aim assist, the recoil affects more heavily as a result.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 00:06

The extreme effectiveness of Camo+Grapple scouts is a testament to how effective humans are at delivering damage independent of ability usage.
No, I don't think I've even seen jest pull that crap off. Unless that was sarcasm?

Also grenades are less about doing damage as forcing vamps to make a move, the pre explosion delay on things like nades and volley totally diminishes them as actual dps abilities.

Further, the levels were not built around vampires being harassable across the entire map persistently, and the factions just aren't balanced for it. That's why the damage falloff was relatively forgiving before because development playtests, for whatever reason, rarely led to this scenario. It's a credit to you guys and the entire point of this Alpha that you've developed such effective human strategies.
There is no problem for vampires to stay in cover on any map, even sents can most of the time with careful flying. The only time I get sniped as tyrant or reaver is when I'm spotted before I spot the humans. Which is rare. Or when I move stupidly out of position, which is my fault.

I can't think of a single map where a sent, even with the grapple is unassailable.

- Migrating some human damage out of weapon damage and into ability damage (risks making weapons feel weak, and making support/situational abilities bad choices)
- Move to projectile hit detection for Crossbows and Longbows (I know this will be popular with the Tribes crowd, but it's very risky for new players. Some hybrid solution might make sense with low-skill hitscan weapons that are weaker in the metagame, etc. but ultimately this just delays the above problem until people are laser accurate with projectiles).
Abilities should stay as utilities imo, dps should be primarily from the weapons. Which is in total contrast to the vampires pre this patch where you basically had to rely on abilities to do anything.

Projectile weapons aren't hard at short range. This game is gravity locked and most movement is in the horizontal plane, also movement is really slow compared to tribes. I'm pretty sure most hunters who only go for short to med range shots would barely notice a difference.

It would mean though that skill shotting pouncing reavers, flying sents and jumping tyrants would be a hell of a lot harder. But still not impossible.

It raises the skill ceiling of this game, and you want a competitive game.

Psyonix_Corey

18th Jan 2014, 00:14

It raises the skill ceiling of this game, and you want a competitive game.

It also further raises the skill disparity between extremely good humans and not-so-good humans without doing anything to the skill curve of vampire players, leading to a lot of potential imbalances in the in-between skill groupings.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 00:32

That'll happen when you have a skill group totally determined by aiming skill and another that's totally determined by proper skill usage and timings.

Vampires will always be inherently easier to do be better at since they require less technical ability and more teamwork and timing. I believe we haven't seen what a properly coordinated vampire team can do. I mean stopwatch measured split second timings level.

Skill differentiation is a good thing, you're working on a proper ranking system so it wont be an issue. Making vampires harder really just makes them weaker, not really making them more skillful. At least I can't think of a change to the vampires that would cause them to raise the skill ceiling.

In any case these buffs are just making vamps easier and easier, full cover changes to maps, hp buffs, melee buffs (aside from the hit detection fix) etc etc

The last time I played a game where humans actually were 40-10 ish for both sides of the match was fricking ages ago playing with jest, talespin and ZP. There has been zero competition to make any conclusions about anything. Just a slew of 80-10 matches and now it's 60-20 since you have to carry even harder with the random teams and can't rely on them for support.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 00:43

No, I don't think I've even seen jest pull that crap off. Unless that was sarcasm?

He does, he runs doesn't usually run grapple unless it's provence though. It's usually knife/grapple or knife/arrow volley.

I can't think of a single map where a sent, even with the grapple is unassailable.

Valeholm + Sentinel, but you never play sent. Even as a reaver I often get nabbed from the back corner before I can do much good.

Abilities should stay as utilities imo, dps should be primarily from the weapons. Which is in total contrast to the vampires pre this patch where you basically had to rely on abilities to do anything.

I disagree, I think it should be about 50/50. As a human I feel you should be able to kill with weapons, but being able to use your abilities should be what really puts the nail in the coffin. You shouldn't be able to be any better than "OK" unless you can properly integrate abilities, especially to get those doubles and triples. The high amount AoE abilities on humans testifies this. It's the significant difference between humans and vamps. Vampire special abilities tend to be single target... Kidnap, pounce, shockwave.... all the high damage ones (outside of tyrant, which jump needs a slight dmg or range nerf atm) affect one person for the most part whereas humans have arrow volley, blinding shot, fire arrow, firewall, turret, etc.

Projectile weapons aren't hard at short range. This game is gravity locked and most movement is in the horizontal plane, also movement is really slow compared to tribes. I'm pretty sure most hunters who only go for short to med range shots would barely notice a difference.

As it should be, a hunter isn't designed to be a sniper. They should just make the hunter reticle a dot with decent recoil. Far shout would be almost impossible at sustained fire where up close is almost guaranteed hit. I have no problem with hunters being strong up close, it's the sniping across map that's an issue. They aren't designed to be scouts. Furthermore, I've seen almost no change to scout hit%. If anything they got a straight up upgrade from the bow buffs to uncharged shots. Charged shots have had no changes unless you are moving while shooting.

It would mean though that skill shotting pouncing reavers, flying sents and jumping tyrants would be a hell of a lot harder. But still not impossible.

Isn't that why it's a "skill shot?"

It raises the skill ceiling of this game, and you want a competitive game.

Responses are inline.

As to Jest: Yes, incidentally sents have gotten a buff, but since I haven't abused it and played as if I'm always about to get shot by "Jest with Warbow" I haven't noticed the "cross map flying" few times I am a Sent. That being said, sents needed the indirect buff. They can get shot out of kidnap or abduct after activation by a single warbow uncharged shot. They won't inflict stun/ drop dmg, but it still cancels, and now can be spammed 5 times before a reload.

As for Corey's "It's a credit to you guys and the entire point of this Alpha that you've developed such effective human strategies."

This is why the dev team needs to play with us more. I respect that you are busy, but with all due respect you are stuck in the box of playing the game how it was designed to be played, we play it to abuse strengths and win. By playing with us more and less yourselves you will find way to balance the less used and nerf the abused things more easily.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 00:49

If humans have the same dps potential from their weapons as their abilities then something like the hunter grenade would need to do 3k+ damage since it's on a 15s cooldown as the multibow is 360 dps. That's what 50/50 would mean.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 01:22

I didn't mean a 50/50% dmg. I meant a reliance on using them.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 01:24

I use mine as soon as they're off cooldown... how much better do you want the bolas to be anyway?

Psyonix_Eric

18th Jan 2014, 01:39

This is why the dev team needs to play with us more. I respect that you are busy, but with all due respect you are stuck in the box of playing the game how it was designed to be played, we play it to abuse strengths and win. By playing with us more and less yourselves you will find way to balance the less used and nerf the abused things more easily.

With all due respect, I think this is a bit insulting and I'm incredibly surprised to hear it. I've been up until 2am before playing with you guys, on my own free time, from my own home, even if I had to be at work early the next morning. I don't get paid to do it and I stay after most matches and talk to whoever is willing to talk about what their thoughts/concerns are, which is again something I am not paid to do. Neither Corey nor myself are community managers yet we come on here to interact and talk directly with people to see what they want to see with the game instead of having everything simply go through a QA team and only a QA team, as is quite common.

Our jobs are to create the game, and to say that we're in a bubble is frankly quite incorrect. The job of alpha/beta testers IS to test and abuse the game, then to tell us how you broke it so we can try to fix it if we think it's in the best interest of the game.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 01:45

I've played with most of you ppl. What I'd really like though is a community vs dev show match.

jestdoit

18th Jan 2014, 02:37

Have to agree with corey about projectile bows though - switching to projectiles doesn't address core balance issues, it just delays the time it takes to develop execution. Projectiles are a lot more susceptible to lag (see laggy alch grenades that fire from the spot you were in half a second ago). Some people will just never be able to hit a sentinel with a projectile, further separating the skill gap and exacerbating balance issues at skilled levels. You'd need to rebalance the entire game around projectiles, probably upping damage so there's an actual reward for landing ranged hits while making sure close-range damage isn't overboard, or nerf the crap out of tyrants and sentinels because their ability to get in close without punishment would be over the top. Might be an interesting experiment - put projectile versions of bows up for sale with better damage/effects, and see how they turn out.

A lot of the problems vampires had were their melee not being up to par, and some abilities being too ineffective, ie reavers having crappy skirmish/harass against skilled players (which is still the case) - letting humans set up a good spread formation or getting shut down because you're overaggressive is just people being outplayed.

Psyonix_Corey

18th Jan 2014, 03:01

If we did projectiles they would have some form of clientside hit detection to compensate for lag. AFAIK this is how Battlefield does it - projectiles with bullet drop with client authority (within reasonable bounds to avoid cheating). The Alchemist does OK without it but it would make her less lag sensitive if she had similar tech implemented.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 03:11

With all due respect, I think this is a bit insulting and I'm incredibly surprised to hear it. I've been up until 2am before playing with you guys, on my own free time, from my own home, even if I had to be at work early the next morning. I don't get paid to do it and I stay after most matches and talk to whoever is willing to talk about what their thoughts/concerns are, which is again something I am not paid to do. Neither Corey nor myself are community managers yet we come on here to interact and talk directly with people to see what they want to see with the game instead of having everything simply go through a QA team and only a QA team, as is quite common.

Our jobs are to create the game, and to say that we're in a bubble is frankly quite incorrect. The job of alpha/beta testers IS to test and abuse the game, then to tell us how you broke it so we can try to fix it if we think it's in the best interest of the game.

First, and more importantly: Sorry Eric (and the entire team), I meant no disrespect by that. I've thanked you guys for the attention you give us on many occasions. (And probably not enough, honestly.) I've never worked with a team more dedicated to listening and more openly communicating with it's players. And, I do see some of you guys playing. I don't even know some of you (General "you" for Psyonix) exist though, for better or worse. (I'm speaking about myself here.) I was talking mainly about those guys that we don't see though, not the ones who play regularly. I'm merely stating that I would assume that the damage metrics and play styles will vary from the internal testing team to the player base. I just feel that some more in-game play with that entire team with the players can only be beneficial. I wasn't trying to knock anything you guys are doing though in this regard.

:(

Back on topic though, I haven't noticed really any major lag issues with alchemists outside of ability activations. The slower rate of fire might be a reason for it though. But, I do agree with Jest that most of the vampire issues have been fixed with the melee. The only issue with melee attacks I've seen I sent in via e-mail (reaver w/haste).

jestdoit

18th Jan 2014, 09:00

People aren't appreciating just how serious the human accuracy and damage nerfs are. Unless you're within their charged melee range, 1 in 6 siegebow shots are landing, and the ones that do have bad damage. This encourages humans to run in close for acceptable damage, something they don't want with the melee fixes. It has nothing to do with the lack of teamwork - I'm not kidding when I say level capped human teams are getting bodied by level 1-5 vampires. Sirshua/Razaiim, Wolfchen, Iliveinhere can attest to the gamese where we lost humans rounds against beginners who just started playing.

There's really nothing to stop vampires from going balls out now - the damage and accuracy just isn't there. Not even warbows are sufficient to stop vampire rushes. You can fly aggressively, get plinked for 220 charge dmg, and either ignore the low damage, or be back in the fight with full hp in seconds. Was playing against a dev, and I was just chain-grabbing his team, getting one kill every time dive was up (while carrying new players on my team). If I got hurt, I'd just fly in circles over their heads like a vulture. Sentinel nerfs were mentioned.

Pub play has shifted heavily from human blowouts to vampire blowouts. I hope we can get some organized matches going over the weekend - I expect them to be even more lopsided, since everyone will know how to play as vampires.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 12:59

Sentinel nerfs were mentioned.
For ****s sake. Can we please not go down the whack-a-mole balance route.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 13:05

People aren't appreciating just how serious the human accuracy and damage nerfs are. Unless you're within their charged melee range, 1 in 6 siegebow shots are landing, and the ones that do have bad damage. This encourages humans to run in close for acceptable damage, something they don't want with the melee fixes. It has nothing to do with the lack of teamwork - I'm not kidding when I say level capped human teams are getting bodied by level 1-5 vampires. Sirshua/Razaiim, Wolfchen, Iliveinhere can attest to the gamese where we lost humans rounds against beginners who just started playing.

There's really nothing to stop vampires from going balls out now - the damage and accuracy just isn't there. Not even warbows are sufficient to stop vampire rushes. You can fly aggressively, get plinked for 220 charge dmg, and either ignore the low damage, or be back in the fight with full hp in seconds. Was playing against a dev, and I was just chain-grabbing his team, getting one kill every time dive was up (while carrying new players on my team). If I got hurt, I'd just fly in circles over their heads like a vulture. Sentinel nerfs were mentioned.

Pub play has shifted heavily from human blowouts to vampire blowouts. I hope we can get some organized matches going over the weekend - I expect them to be even more lopsided, since everyone will know how to play as vampires.

If hunters TRULY hit one of 6 shots, then take off damage reduction. But, the recoil is fine. They aren't meant to be long range, esp since the siege bow can kill you in 2 seconds up close. Leave the cross map stuff for the scout. But, other than that humans I really do think are fine, we've beaten good vampire set-ups the way it currently is, with team work... which is the real issue atm.

LOFO1993

18th Jan 2014, 13:30

I haven't played as much as some of you guys have since the patch rolled out, but maybe my impressions may help.

It's partially true that in inexperienced players' matches now vampires usually win, while humans did before. I'd guess it has something to do with the melee changes on their side. More than once I realized me and other three players were just upfront charging 4 humans at a time, and by just swinging around we could easily wipe them out completely losing maybe 1 or 2 men. I know this is not a common situation, but as I said it was a match with many new players, and the different play style most of them had made me notice this quite clearly. If we tried that before the patch, even with inexperienced players on the other side, most of the times it was us dying.

At the same time though, I didn't feel any real game change on both humans and vampires during more "competent" matches. I'm certainly not doing metrics, and maybe the shortest matches may help hide some kind of unbalance, but the last changes didn't really change the game for me, neither for the better nor for the worse.

One last thing I'm not sure of and that you can clarify for me: as a Scout, most of the times hitting someone quite far from me means the damage I dealt is WAY less than it should (like, 70 vs. 180 or what it is normally). I'm experiencing this with the Swiftbow, but for what I've seen it is just the same with the base bow.

Is it how things are meant to be, is it a bug, is it lag or what? I've never figured it out. Sorry if it's a known problem and it's me being uninformed, but just looking around I didn't find anything on the matter.

PS: if it means something, I 100% agree with cmstache, Hunter is not and should be not a sniper. In the hands of too precise players it would just become impossible for vampires to play against 4 automatic and super-precise sniper rifles.

It's fine for us to test and break the game as hard as we can, but the purpose is to allow the developers to make it as much balanced and fair as possible, not to use the tricks we find at our own advantage. Hunters are meant to be the mid-range class, they deal insane damage and it's fairly easy to shoot with them, but they shouldn't be exploitable to become long-range machine-guns. If for some reason they can also become tremendous snipers, that's something to correct, not to hang on to.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 14:26

PS: if it means something, I 100% agree with cmstache, Hunter is not and should be not a sniper. In the hands of too precise players it would just become impossible for vampires to play against 4 automatic and super-precise sniper rifles.

It's fine for us to test and break the game as hard as we can, but the purpose is to allow the developers to make it as much balanced and fair as possible, not to use the tricks we find at our own advantage. Hunters are meant to be the mid-range class, they deal insane damage and it's fairly easy to shoot with them, but they shouldn't be exploitable to become long-range machine-guns. If for some reason they can also become tremendous snipers, that's something to correct, not to hang on to.

The scout damage reduction shouldn't be there for charged shots. Unaimed damage should be reduced. Hunters still punish sents in the air (just tried it vs jest) With a bolt thrower he did about 500 dmg in 1.5 seconds at a mid-range. That seems good to me. Not all bolts hit, but it was enough to make me not want to do it again (although I still did since I was testing t as he says it is.) The scout nerf with what's really punishing the humans vs them I think. Scouts can no longer control the skies, hunter's aren't designed to.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 14:33

If we did projectiles they would have some form of clientside hit detection to compensate for lag. AFAIK this is how Battlefield does it - projectiles with bullet drop with client authority (within reasonable bounds to avoid cheating). The Alchemist does OK without it but it would make her less lag sensitive if she had similar tech implemented.
Danger! I hope you're planning on using VAC system.

I'm just a projectile fan though, it might not even be a good idea for this game tbh. Since, as I said the speeds are low, distances even across map are short and there isn't much vertical movement. For instance I try to adadad dance as a vamp occasionally and it doesn't work at all since I move so slowly. The trade off of increasing latency sensitivity for more fun weapons probably isn't worth it. meh

I would like to repeat that I hate random spread and recoil as a way to lower dps, it increases randomness in encounters which is bad for competitive games. "Oh the humans got that wipe because player a luckily got 3/6 of hits to connect, well played player a". I much prefer falloff adjustments.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 14:41

I agree that random dmg should be avoided, but you can't say that accounting for recoil isn't skill.

LOFO1993

18th Jan 2014, 15:02

The scout damage reduction shouldn't be there for charged shots. Unaimed damage should be reduced.

Well, my fully charged shots are reduced as well, I just tried. It happens on way longer distances that those sufficient to reduce the normal shots damage, but it certainly does. I have made a couple of screenshots to show/prove it.

So, OK, new bug found it seems. I repeat, I've been using the Swiftbow, and my ping was about 70-80 on EU servers (the right ones for me, living in Italy). My fully charged shots as a Scout get damage reduction on very long distances. If you Psyonix guys want me to send screenshots of it to the usual address I'll do of course.

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 15:11

I have yet to see a charged shot take less dmg than normal (stormbow is an exception for obvious reasons, it shouldn't change really though since it's dmg isn't from the arrow itself). In all fairness though, the swiftbow is what I hear most problems are with, which I don't currently have atm.

Psyonix_Corey

18th Jan 2014, 16:08

Well, my fully charged shots are reduced as well, I just tried. It happens on way longer distances that those sufficient to reduce the normal shots damage, but it certainly does. I have made a couple of screenshots to show/prove it.

So, OK, new bug found it seems. I repeat, I've been using the Swiftbow, and my ping was about 70-80 on EU servers (the right ones for me, living in Italy). My fully charged shots as a Scout get damage reduction on very long distances. If you Psyonix guys want me to send screenshots of it to the usual address I'll do of course.

Not a bug, but the drop off will be reduced in a subsequent patch.

LOFO1993

18th Jan 2014, 16:20

OK, thanks for the clarification Corey.

Razaiim

18th Jan 2014, 21:41

So I finally got some hard play-time in post patch. These are my impressions of the update.

Human Accuracy/fall-off
Huge drop in damage as a result. It takes careful aiming to land a hit as hunter to land a hit with anything besides multi-bow. Currently I think the hunter feel bottle-necked, as I find the bolt thrower and repeater fall to the side. You can take the multi-bow, and get consistent damage at a range. 23*3 (the minimum damage I've done at range) damage per volley, while easily healed off, can be problematic for approaching vampires that don't seek cover. Or you can take the siege bow and wait for vampires to approach your team-mates, and deal significant damage per shot, but lose accuracy super fast at range.

I have nowhere near enough skill with scout to comment on accuracy reduction, but I'm finding the damage fall-off is appropriate, if slightly over zealous.

Something I have noticed is scouts are now universally using warbow, and I have spent a lot of gameplay as vampire getting bounced between warbow shots. There is also a huge rise of alchemist usage, which I think is good, as it was a rarely seen class pre-patch.

Aside: I noticed adjusting grapple in the works. Personally I laugh at a human that uses it as a vampire. If anyone remembers EvilTwin and Talespin, they ran grapple frequently, and that is when I had the easiest time picking them off. I always let out a sigh of relief when even when Jest ran grapple. It removes you from the team with only the benefit of wider viewing angles. With changes to humans, it's even harder to support a grappling scout.

Overall, I find humans now needing to rely on some of the less fun-to-play tactics of house camping and warbow juggling to pull ahead of a vampire team that can bare minimum attack all at once. Having played the extremes of humans being highly accurate to mediocre at range, I would like to see some middle ground. I also want to see an alternative to the bolas as a hunter primary skill, but that's in a different boat.

Vampire Buffs
I am very satisfied by these from both human and vampire perspectives. The ability for the reaver to finally hunt down that eternally sprinting near-dead human is very satisfying, and feels appropriate, as opposed to a huge miss and now you've lost him as he speeds away. All-in all, vampires feel dangerous when coordinated against a human team. Also, by reducing the hunter count in some matches, this indirectly increases the utility of haste/enrage.
The sentinel feels way less vulnerable which is a plus as one who runs sentinel for the most part.

Match length
Its too short I feel. There is very little to add here. I would be interested in trying the middle ground.

Overall
I like the direction of the changes to vampires, and the execution is excellent on your part. Humans have definitely ended up on the weak side, relying on the matchmaker as well as warbow juggling or camping in houses to pull ahead. Personally I never liked the removing of viable tools as an attempt to balance. I usually hope that the imbalance is resolved by adding new tools to the weaker team, over taking away from the strong team.

Oroibahazopi

18th Jan 2014, 21:47

Multibow has the highest dps, the "extra damage" on siege bow is an illusion from the damage numbers appearing being greater. It's flat out the best Hunter weapon.

Warbow is suckage also, the default bow is probably the best right now. Swiftbow is still a contender. Stormbow will be decent if it ever gets fixed, possibly the most destructive. I 100% agree with the grapple though, ppl don't seem to get how important keeping los on each other is.

jestdoit

18th Jan 2014, 21:58

Hunters still punish sents in the air (just tried it vs jest) With a bolt thrower he did about 500 dmg in 1.5 seconds at a mid-range.

I wouldn't call it an accurate test since you weren't flying fast or juking much. I distinctly remember you *running* away with a sliver of hp on Provance, and I wasted half my bolt-thrower clip (36 shots) trying to finish you while I had LOS. Then you were like "hunter accuracy seems fine", and I was like "you have no idea".

Have there been changes to lag compensation beside the melee fixes? Different server rates between euro and NA servers?

My experiences between playing euro and NA have been wildly different this patch, compared to previous versions where I couldn't notice a difference:

-I immediately noticed that people are rolling right through grabs on euro. Maybe 25% of my grabs are actually landing. That has never happened for me on NA, where grabs always land like they're supposed to, and can't be rolled through.

-Flying, go over a human during a perfect grab setup, starting rising in the air. Half a second later the character positions roll back and I'm grounded.

RainaAudron

18th Jan 2014, 22:32

Could we increase the time to at least 10mins and 30 kills? The matches are just over so quickly... :/

cmstache

18th Jan 2014, 23:22

I wouldn't call it an accurate test since you weren't flying fast or juking much. I distinctly remember you *running* away with a sliver of hp on Provance, and I wasted half my bolt-thrower clip (36 shots) trying to finish you while I had LOS. Then you were like "hunter accuracy seems fine", and I was like "you have no idea".

Have there been changes to lag compensation beside the melee fixes? Different server rates between euro and NA servers?

My experiences between playing euro and NA have been wildly different this patch, compared to previous versions where I couldn't notice a difference:

-I immediately noticed that people are rolling right through grabs on euro. Maybe 25% of my grabs are actually landing. That has never happened for me on NA, where grabs always land like they're supposed to, and can't be rolled through.

-Flying, go over a human during a perfect grab setup, starting rising in the air. Half a second later the character positions roll back and I'm grounded.

I didn't mean "Seems fine" as in "all the shots hit", I meant "Seems fine" as "you did a decent damage at that range". You weren't point blank, shooting at a moving target in the sky, with an automatic weapon. If you used a multibow then you probably would have killed me.

Razaiim

19th Jan 2014, 00:46

I wouldn't call it an accurate test since you weren't flying fast or juking much. I distinctly remember you *running* away with a sliver of hp on Provance, and I wasted half my bolt-thrower clip (36 shots) trying to finish you while I had LOS. Then you were like "hunter accuracy seems fine", and I was like "you have no idea".

Have there been changes to lag compensation beside the melee fixes? Different server rates between euro and NA servers?

My experiences between playing euro and NA have been wildly different this patch, compared to previous versions where I couldn't notice a difference:

-I immediately noticed that people are rolling right through grabs on euro. Maybe 25% of my grabs are actually landing. That has never happened for me on NA, where grabs always land like they're supposed to, and can't be rolled through.